So like all other palaeo-geeks, I've found I've been sucked into the Jurassic World trailer, like a bystander witnessing a bus full of orphans crashing into a train full of TNT...
Now of course I'm... displeased... to understate it, by the lack of unfeathered, anatomically broken, boring retro dinosaurs. However that's kind of old none surprising news by this point, given the director's public statements from a while ago.
For me seeing the trailer held a single moment of giddy joy, when the Mosasaur leapt out of the water... Sadly it was short lived. (and no it wasn't due to the question: "how the hell did a mosquito bite a marine reptile?" though that too adds to the sheer stupidity of JP4)
For me seeing the trailer held a single moment of giddy joy, when the Mosasaur leapt out of the water... Sadly it was short lived. (and no it wasn't due to the question: "how the hell did a mosquito bite a marine reptile?" though that too adds to the sheer stupidity of JP4)
I found the moment and the giddy sapped from me seconds after this exact scene played out (and the trailer went to the chasm of stupidity that was the hybrid threat). I realized the movie didn't need to invent a killer smart Dinosaur hybrid (or to quote Sealab "I took nature's perfect killing machine and needlessly turned it into a robot") to be scary.
They'd invented a movie worthy monster right here in this scene!
The reason being the meal for the Mosasaur.
The trailer goes out of its way to hammer in that's a Great White Shark. The trailer goes out of its way to emphasis this Mosasaur can swallow the Great White in one gulp (which at least is scientifically accurate...). The trailer goes out of its way to hammer all this at me, a rather avid Mosasaur fan... Triggering an amusing thought in my head.
Just how many Blue Whales big is this Mosasaur?
I quickly set up this diagram. Step 1 was to grab a full body shot of a Mosasaur (by myself) and scale it up so the head was the same size as the movie still. This gave me the whole Mosasaur. (and yeah I know his tail is not straight, again this was meant as a fast and loose demonstration of the absurdity on display, not a scientific paper).
Then I took the Shark and subbed a scaled diagram from wikipedia for simplicity, and measured out my full sized Mosasaur. Then going with a biggish size Great White at 6m I could measure out a Blue Whale and the largest known Mosasaurs (another reason I played fast and loose with the mosasaur diagram, is there is contention on the largest genus and specimens among Mosasaurs).
In conclusion I ended up with a Mosasaur that no matter what the size the adult shark is, gives me a marine reptile much much larger than a Blue Whale. That to me puts it into Kaiju size. I'd rather have seen this guy in Pacific Rim then a Jurassic Park film.
Here is a Mosasaur in a much better scale.
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| Taniwhasaurus with human. Taniwhasaurus by Craig Dylke Driver photo by Unknown (I lost their name in a harddrive collapse... if you know let me know so I can reapply the credit ;) ) |
UPDATE March. 4, 2016
This post has proven to be by and large the most popular I've ever posted on ART Evolved. So I thought I could afford to spend the time to this really right.
So I present a more accurate and thorough version of the size comparison...
For all the apologists, here is the due diligence with all the possible shark sizes included.
However the moment our shark drops below 6 meters it does NOT have to be a Great White, it can be a Tiger shark. Which means the film makers emphasised an unimportant thing when they showed the Great White multiple times if it was a smaller Great White.
However to back up my initial conclusion this clip has a Mosasaur easily at LEAST as big as my biggest... You'll note how tiny the humans are in the front row (or better yet notice how the back row humans are the correct size for a real mosasaur).
And please just try and tell me it is supposed to be a small juvenile Great White, after looking at this promotional poster...
Don't believe me go watch the movie... you're welcome Universal